No week is the wrong week to dive into good books by or about migrants and immigrants. During a time of heightened scrutiny and inflammatory rhetoric directed at immigrants in the United States, these stories have never been more valuable.
This may be the exact right week to read an migration or immigration narrative, though: It’s New York City’s annual Immigrant Heritage Week, and to celebrate, the New York Public Library’s Elizabeth Waters posted a fantastic list of NYC-based immigration books, both fiction and non-fiction, worth checking out. (The NYPL is also throwing a number of free events in honor of the week, for New York readers.)
It’s easy for some to see immigrants as threatening outsiders who are encroaching on their resources, jobs and space. But a closer look at the experiences of people who have immigrated or migrated to the United States often shows a more nuanced, humane viewpoint. Immigrants’ novels and memoirs can remind us that they’re simply flesh-and-blood people, who have often overcome great obstacles to earn a living, to improve their new communities and to become American.
Check out the NYPL’s recommendations below ― click on the titles to check out the books from the NYPL ― and head to their blog for more on the selected books.
Nonfiction
1. The Other Half: The Life of Jacob Riis and the World of Immigrant America by Tom Buk-Swienty; translated from the Danish by Annette Buk-Swienty
Find this book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.
2. The Rise of Abraham Cahan by Seth Lipsky
Find this book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.
3. 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement by Jane Ziegelman
Find this book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.
4. Down These Mean Streets by Piri Thomas
Find this book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.
5. When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago
Find this book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.
6. The Factory of Facts by Luc Sante
Find this book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.
7. ’Tis: A Memoir by Frank McCourt
Find this book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.
8. Purpose: An Immigrant’s Story by Wyclef Jean
Find this book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.
9. Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina by Raquel Cepeda
Find this book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.
10. Little Failure: A Memoir by Gary Shteyngart
Find this book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.
11. Not for Everyday Use: A Memoir by Elizabeth Nunez
Find this book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.
12. Undocumented: A Dominican Boy’s Odyssey from a Homeless Shelter to the Ivy League by Dan-El Padilla Peralta
Find this book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.
13. Love, Loss, and What We Ate by Padma Lakshmi
Find this book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.
Fiction
14. Maggie, A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane
Find this book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.
15. Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska
Find this book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.
16. Call it Sleep by Henry Roth
Find this book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.
17. Christ in Concrete by Pietro Di Donato
Find this book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.
18. Brown Girl, Brownstones by Paule Marshall
Find this book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.
19. The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos
Find this book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.
20. How the García Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez
Find this book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.
21. Typical American by Gish Jen
Find this book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.
22. Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat
Find this book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.
23. Native Speaker by Chang-Rae Lee
Find this book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.
24. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
Find this book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.
25. The Russian Debutante’s Handbook by Gary Shteyngart
Find this book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.
26. Brooklyn: A Novel by Colm Tóibín
Find this book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.
27. Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok
Find this book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.
28. Open City by Teju Cole
Find this book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.
29. Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue
Find this book on Amazon or your local indie bookstore.
Related
Before You Go
